I got a couple of emails with photos of new Short Lady builds. The first is from well-known rocket man Gene Border:

Subject: Short Lady

Hello Larry,
Gene Border here. I sent you a photo of my fully painted 'Eddy Electra". I have it rigged up with a propane feed however, have not run it yet..............soon. Meanwhile I built a Short Lady valveless. There's a picture attached. Also some pictures of one of my large rocket projects.

Gene Border

I'll post Gene's rocket pictures in the Rockets Forum sometime later.

Another couple of emails are from a fellow named Bob Komishock:

Subject: SHORT LADYS FROM PA.

HELLO LARRY
I am from PA and I was into pulse jets in the 60s just out of HS and I never had good luck with them until I found your web site and I built a Short Lady. That was it. It ran first time and runs good; we have a lot of fun with it. I also built a small short lady 20" OA and a smaller one I call the little girl at 14"OAL. L = 14". AND THEY ALL RUN GREAT on propane vapor. The small short lady I am putting in my 2 meter glider RC elec. power - it has 2 times the thrust that the elec. prop motor has so it should push it and I won't have that 12 oz batteri ha. I will attach the pics for them and thank you very much for designing such a good pulse jet engine - I love it. Robert Komishock

Subject: SHORT LADY HAD A LITTLE GIRL

HELLO LARRY I sent some pics the other day and here it is - I call her the Short Lady Little Girl. I will put this one on my 2 meter glider it has good thrust. I love the FWEs - I built 5 different sizes of them and they all run great ...

Subject: Re: SHORT LADY HAD A LITTLE GIRL

HI LARRY. Yes, you can put the pics on the forum, it's ok with me. When I built the Little Girl I used a sliding tail pipe to get the highest thrust. It runs good on 1 PSI propane vapor, I am working on a liquid fuel system with an intravenous bag that my wife had. The little girl is 16" long with a .437 ID tailpipe - it's made from 4130 chomemoly and has a CM-6 NGK spark plug, the fuel pipe is .097 OD brass tube coiled round 3 times. I had the 4130 from aircraft motor mounts that we made for piper in the 70s. Piper was 30 miles from my house here in PA. I used your scaler form one of your forums. I have copied all your drawings since 2002 - I made the shark but it would not run by it self. I've been building pjs since the 1970s and none run as good as the Short Lady. I dont know if you know it but the Short Lady is a milestone in the pulse jet world. THANKS.
Robert Komishock

Let me tell you, these emails "made my day". I keep telling you: If you're going to do engines, why not do some that people can get running and have fun with? Almost better than money in the bank! I can't wait to hear about Robert getting his Little Girl flying ...

Mark wrote:Larry,
Is this attention more from PJ.com or from the Wired Magazine article do you think? Impressive!
Mark

Mark -

Mr Border sent an occasional email long before the Wired article. Mr Komishock I had never heard of before his email (except that Eric tipped me off that he knew someone else who had built them in a variety of sizes) - but he says he's been following along since 2002. So, I would say these forums get all the credit in these two cases.

NOTE: I had no private communications with these gentlemen during construction of their engines. I have no idea how much Eric may have talked with Mr Komishock during his build, if at all. Obviously, both these guys have the necessary skills and tools to get the job done with little or no hand-holding.

Thank you, gentlemen! I will probably never be remembered for creating the "world's greatest ... etc." valveless pulsejet. But I bet I'll be remembered for convincing everybody and his nephew (maybe some nieces, too!) that they can build a real working jet engine and have some fun with it. That would be good enough.

Robert has made some pretty crazy engines, his pressure jets are especially wild looking, I never saw a "heart" shaped pressure jet before.

I dont know if anyone noticed but I put all the recent advanced FWE builders up on my free plans page, with two of his little FWE's. There are a bunch of students in norway, sweden, and some other countries finishing up their advanced FWE school projects so hopefully I will get some more pictures from them too.

Its quite ironic, I actually went to school about a mile away from Roberts shop, and my current thrust stand is made of 4" angle iron which came from his shop as well. If it were quiet like out in the country I probably would have heard some of his engines running and went "HEY THATS A PULSEJET!" and followed the noise back to the source.

Eric

Talking like a pirate does not qualify as experience, this should be common sense, as pirates have little real life experience in anything other than smelling bad, and contracting venereal diseases

Last night, for the first time EVER, I got a long-distance call from a guy asking pulsejet questions. This is a fellow from Connecticut, mostly interested in building threaded pipe engines, one of which he's gotten to run! (He was amazed when I told him that this had already been tried with some success by a few people.)

One amusing thing is that he started out by welding up an Elektra I out of conduit, and claims he had it running before it even cooled off from the final welding! An interesting detail that simplified construction of that one is that he bored a slightly oversize hole for the tailpipe, then flared the front end of the conduit and slipped the tailpipe in from the inside of the chamber box, then welded it all around from the back side. So, inside, there is kind of a raised flare at the rear of the chamber. Very straightforward design mod. I encouraged him to check out the forums and sign on, since I'm not much help on the threaded-pipe jobs.

So, this one was not from the forums, but from somewhere else (he got my name online by searching somehow) - I should have grilled him a little more about it. He was unfamiliar with the forums, and I'm sure he'll be amazed at what he sees going on here, esp. in the Valveless Forum.

I missed the Make article and when I went to the Make website I saw a jam jar project. Was the jam jar project anything unique in construction? I wanted to read it but don't subscribe to Make Magazine.
Mark